MORNING BUZZ: Sandy, Endorsements and Reunion

MORNING BUZZ: Sandy, Endorsements and Reunion

Good Morning…

My voice has recovered from a weekend of trying to talk to people I hadn’t seen in 20 years over loud music…If you didn’t read Thursday’s blog, Sally and I went to our 20 year reunion in Chicago this weekend. Along with a chance to see my family for dinner, it was a really fun weekend full of reminiscing about the crazy and hilarious things we did as teenagers. We even learned a few things I’d never heard about some of our best friends.

Everyone looked great. The guys look older…I have to say the women must have better genes…they all looked exactly as I remember them at 18.

The Zhoozhing sweater was a hit and I actually liked the combo enough that we went shopping and got a few more things while we were there.

Enough about the weekend…there’s news to talk about.

Sandy

Sometimes we over hype the news..it appears in the case of Hurricane Sandy…the predictions are spot on. Water began flooding the streets of Atlantic City New Jersey this morning and water is now coming over the walls of Battery park in New York City.

This storm is hitting the place along the east coast where it will affect the most people. From Florida to New England…they’re going to be cleaning up from this one for a while…what’s worse the back-end could be cold weather and snow for the upper elevations. Iowans are already there to help with the recovery. Both Red Cross Volunteers and Mid-American crews are out east to help.

Endorsements

The Storm may be the October surprise pundits look for in a Presidential campaign. As of the writing of this blog, it looks like both campaigns are going to suspend their events while the storm hits the coast tonight into tomorrow. Governor Romney has an event scheduled in the Quad Cities this afternoon and Channel 13’s Dave Price tells us he WILL make that event but WILL NOT be at tomorrow’s scheduled event in Des Moines.

I want to make it clear before I say what I’m about to say…the first concern for all of us is the millions of people who will be dealing with the after-effects of Sandy for weeks. This could ruin more than a few homes and disrupts millions of lives.

The reality is, we still have a VERY close Presidential Campaign and it’s unclear how this all might move the race. For Gov Romeny this is bad news as you would suppose he had the momentum going into the final week. There is no way to continue an aggressive campaigning without looking like he doesn’t care about the millions of Americans who will be deal with something more immediate…if not more important.

For the President it’s hard to look at this as anything but a positive for his re-election effort. he gets to look Presidential and lead while the storm comes ashore. That is, unless the Administration should, in some way bobble the response. I can’t imagine that would happen.

Endorsements

One more note on the election. you could have knocked me over with a feather when I got the tweet about the Des Moines Register’s endorsement this weekend. It’s the first time in 40 years that the paper has picked a Republican to endorse in the Presidential. Do these endorsements make any difference? Depends on who you ask…but in a close election you’d think everything counts.

In Knotts

Jake Knott will be out for most of, if not all of the rest of the season because of surgery to his shoulder. that report came to us about ten minutes before we went on at Noon. Keith will have more tonight but if you are an Iowa State fan…that’s not good news going into a game against a visiting Oklahoma team.